With very limited resources it makes sense to practice triage - put those resources will they will benefit the most people. Looking at a map of covid-19 in the state of Indiana that would be Indianapolis and surrounding suburbs because that's where the outbreak is worst and there are the most victims. If pouring all of those resources into that central location can actually reduce the disease burden then arguably yes, they should get all of it because other places either do not have cases yet or have few enough the current medical system in those places can handle the situation. If the situation changes in a week or whatever reevaluate.

Of course emotionally I may have all manner of reactions, but we need to use science and reason to attack this problem, not emotion, not "me first!"

This isn't a matter of one group hogging all the goodies and leaving the rest in the cold. The situation is that there isn't nearly enough to go around. You might be hearing the word "triage", which is a tidy word that means "we're going to have to choose who lives and who dies because it's impossible to save everyone with what we have". That is where we are, or shortly will be.

Sure, I'd like the cavalry to come over the hill to rescue us over here but I live in reality, not fantasy. Indianapolis has 10 times the number of infected than my area, they should get at least 10 times the resources. More than that, if additional resources can reverse the current trends and reduce the burden there so future aid will be freed up for other parts of the state.

So, while I thank you for your expression of sympathy, I understand why my area is not first in line for stuff right now. I can not fault the logic of those decisions even if emotionally I am quite torn up by it.

I understand triage and prioritization. In fact, I earlier had to begin explaining it, as you may recall.

Still, it remains - the Navajo nation of 360,000 people has received assistance from the Federal government whereas my county of 485,000 people not only has not received any Federal aid, we might never receive any part of Federal aid during this emergency. Your wish for the Navajo to go to the front of the Federal assistance line has been granted. Personally, I'm accepting of that - my area has more of its own resources to help itself, as well as a state government that will also help.

What I'm getting at is that your situations are actually distinct. Indiana has received multiple shipments of aid from the feds, and if that aid hasn't been distributed to your area, it's down to the decisions of state authorities. The Navajo Nation's treaties are directly with the Federal Government, which is why it's entitled to directly receive aid without a state government interfering, unlike Lake County. So the whole 'well, we aren't getting any at all, but they are' line doesn't really follow - it'd require Indiana, which in this case is the closer analogue to the Nation, to be receiving no supplies from the SNS.

"Doctors keep their scalpels and other instruments handy, for emergencies. Keep your philosophy ready too—ready to understand heaven and earth. In everything you do, even the smallest thing, remember the chain that links them. Nothing earthly succeeds by ignoring heaven, nothing heavenly by ignoring the earth." M.A.A.A

MADRID (Reuters) -
Spain’s coronavirus lockdown was extended on Thursday to last until at least April 12 as Europe’s second-worst hit country struggled to tackle a fast increase in the death toll.

Parliament voted in the early hours of Thursday to extend emergency measures - including the state of lockdown that has seen people confined to their homes except for essential trips for food, medicine and work.

Confirmed cases in Spain have jumped 10-fold since the state of emergency was imposed on March 14, while its death toll exceeded China’s on Wednesday, with 738 lives lost in a single day.

“It is not easy to extend the state of emergency,” Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said in Parliament. “I am convinced the only efficient option against the virus is social isolation.”

A majority of 321 lawmakers voted in favor of the extension, while 28 abstained. The largest opposition party, the conservative People’s Party, supported the measure. However, its leader Pablo Casado chastized Sanchez for what he described as a late and inadequate response to the crisis.

Casado blasted the decision not to cancel the International Women’s Day marches on March 8, which drew hundreds of thousands of people to the streets, and criticized the government’s failure to provide medical professionals with vital equipment.

“Governments don’t send their soldiers to the front without helmets, flak jackets and ammunition. But our health workers don’t have any protection,” Casado told parliament.

Nursing homes, whose elderly residents are highly vulnerable to the disease, have been particularly hard hit.

An analysis by radio network Cadena Ser found at least 397 residents of such homes had died from coronavirus, more than 10% of the country’s 3,434 death toll. The health ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the findings.

In Madrid, Spain’s worst affected region, hearses continued to arrive at the city’s ice rink, which was converted into a makeshift morgue after authorities said existing facilities lacked resources.

Procuring equipment like masks, scrubs and gloves has become difficult as the government fights to contain the virus.

Foreign Minister Arancha Gonzalez complained that market speculation was driving up prices for some items.

“We must favor long-term purchases from a group of more stable and more established companies so that we don’t depend on these crooks,” she told Basque radio station Radio Euskadi.

Government spokeswoman Maria Jesus Montero said separately that some suppliers were not meeting delivery deadlines.

Spain has ordered 432 million euros ($471.4 million) of masks, gloves and testing kits from China, and has turned to NATO partners for protective gear and ventilators.

"If scientists and inventors who develop disease cures and useful technologies don't get lifetime royalties, I'd like to know what fucking rationale you have for some guy getting lifetime royalties for writing an episode of Full House." - Mike Wong

"The present air situation in the Pacific is entirely the result of fighting a fifth rate air power." - U.S. Navy Memo - 24 July 1944

As hospitals across the country face shortages of personal protective equipment due to surges of coronavirus patients, health care professionals are reportedly privately discussing the possibility of a blanket do-not-resuscitate policy for infected patients to mitigate the risks for those responding to a code blue.

“If we risk their well-being in service of one patient, we detract from the care of future patients, which is unfair,” bioethicist Scott Halpern at the University of Pennsylvania wrote in a circulated model guideline, according to The Washington Post. Still, he said a blanket do-not-resuscitate policy for all COVID-19 patients is too ”draconian.”

He suggested the patient’s doctor and another should sign off on case-by-case do-not-resuscitate orders for coronavirus patients, giving the reason to the family – although they don’t have to agree with it.

Richard Wunderink, an intensive-care medical director at Northwestern, said that many families are choosing to sign DNRs when hospital staff explain that having to put on protective gear before tending to a "coding" patient decreases the chance of saving their life.

"By the time you get all gowned up and double-gloved the patient is going to be dead,” Fred Wyese, an ICU nurse in Michigan, told The Post. “We are going to be coding dead people. It is a nightmare.”

Doctors swear an oath to do everything they can to save a patient’s life, but as COVID-19 cases surge, shortages in necessary PPE are forcing medical professionals into ethical quandaries.

"We are now facing some difficult choices in how we apply medical resources — including staff,” Lewis Kaplan, president of the Society of Critical Care Medicine and a University of Pennsylvania surgeon, said, according to The Post.

When a patient “codes,” meaning they’ve gone into cardiac arrest, all available staff respond to the code blue to perform CPR and other lifesaving measures.

“It doesn’t help anybody if our doctors and nurses are felled by this virus and not able to care for us,” R. Alta Charo, a University of Wisconsin-Madison bioethicist, said. “The code process is one that puts them at an enhanced risk.”

At George Washington University, they use a machine to perform compressions on a coding patient, but since there are only two available, as a contingency hospital staff will place plastic sheeting over the patient as a barrier before beginning CPR.

“From a safety perspective you can make the argument that the safest thing is to do nothing,” Bruno Petinaux, chief medical officer at GW told The Post. “I don’t believe that is necessarily the right approach. So we have decided not to go in that direction. What we are doing is what can be done safely.”

Any potential do-not-resuscitate policy would have to run in accordance with state laws.

"If scientists and inventors who develop disease cures and useful technologies don't get lifetime royalties, I'd like to know what fucking rationale you have for some guy getting lifetime royalties for writing an episode of Full House." - Mike Wong

"The present air situation in the Pacific is entirely the result of fighting a fifth rate air power." - U.S. Navy Memo - 24 July 1944

"If scientists and inventors who develop disease cures and useful technologies don't get lifetime royalties, I'd like to know what fucking rationale you have for some guy getting lifetime royalties for writing an episode of Full House." - Mike Wong

"The present air situation in the Pacific is entirely the result of fighting a fifth rate air power." - U.S. Navy Memo - 24 July 1944

The shortage of safety gear at one Manhattan hospital is so dire that desperate nurses have resorted to wearing trash bags — and some blame the situation for the coronavirus death of a beloved colleague.

A stunning photo shared on social media shows three nurses at Mount Sinai West posing in a hallway while clad in large, black plastic trash bags fashioned into makeshift protective garb.

One of them is even holding the open box of 20 Hefty “Strong” 33-gallon garbage bags they used to cloak themselves.

“NO MORE GOWNS IN THE WHOLE HOSPITAL,” the caption reads.

“NO MORE MASKS AND REUSING THE DISPOSABLE ONES…NURSES FIGURING IT OUT DURING COVID-19 CRISIS.”

The caption includes such hashtags as #heftytotherescue, #riskingourlivestosaveyours and #pleasedonateppe, with the “ppe” referring to “personal protective equipment.”

Meanwhile, staffers at the hospital near Columbus Circle on Wednesday tied the lack of basic supplies there to the death of assistant nursing manager Kious Kelly, who tested positive for coronavirus about two weeks ago.

Kelly, 48, was admitted to Mount Sinai’s flagship hospital on the Upper East Side on March 17 and died Tuesday night, the workers said.

Another nurse described “issues with supplies for about a year now,” during which it got “to the point where we had to hide our own supplies and go to other units looking for stuff because even the supply room would have nothing most of the time.”

“But when we started getting COVID patients, it became critical,” the nurse said.

The nurse sources said they were using the same PPE between infected and non-infected patients and, because there were no more spare gowns in the hospital, they took to wearing trash bags to stop the spread of infection.

“We had to reuse our masks, gowns and the [face] shield,” one nurse said. “We were told, ‘You get one for the entire time until this is over.’”

The nurse also said various items, including masks, wipes and Purell hand sanitizer, began “disappearing through the night.”

A spokesman for the hospital strongly disagreed, when contacted Wednesday, that they did not have the proper equipment and were not protecting their staff.

SEE ALSO

De Blasio: People will die if we don't get more ventilators this week
Another nurse described Kelly as “a brother to me.”

“He was willing to help others in need, especially in this coronavirus outbreak,” the nurse said.

Kelly’s younger sister, Marya Sherron of Indianapolis, confirmed his death to The Post and said he had informed her of his illness about 10 days earlier.

“He told me he had the coronavirus,” she said. “He was in ICU but he thought he was OK. He didn’t think it was serious as it was.”

Sherron — who said she “absolutely” believed her brother was infected at the hospital — said he had “severe asthma” but was otherwise healthy.

Kelly had trouble talking due to the disease, so the siblings communicated by text until his condition worsened and he stopped responding about a week ago, she said.

“I tried to get him several times but I was told by the doctors that he was on a ventilator,” she said.

Sherron said she was told on Monday that he might not pull through, and that he died about 11 p.m. Tuesday.

“We are broken,” she said.

Sherron also said she wanted the city to know “what an amazing person my brother was” and to “hold the powers that be accountable.”

“Today, we lost another hero — a compassionate colleague, friend and selfless caregiver.”

In January, Kelly was featured by Mount Sinai on its website, which quoted a letter in which he was hailed as an “angel” by Joseph Fuoco, whose late mom, Camile Fuoco, underwent almost four years of breast cancer treatments before her death at Mount Sinai West last summer.

“Assistant Nurse Manager Kious Jordan Kelly, RN, showed my mom and us empathy and compassion that helped us get through the weekend and what was to come,” Joseph wrote.

“He went above and beyond and is an asset to the hospital.”

I have no idea how true this is, but if it is, these health care workers deserve better.

Never apologise for being a geek, because they won't apologise to you for being an arsehole. John Barrowman - 22 June 2014 Perth Supernova.

Deaths Per M calculated as follows:[Deaths That Day DIVIDED BY Total Population of Country] TIMES 1,000,000.

"If scientists and inventors who develop disease cures and useful technologies don't get lifetime royalties, I'd like to know what fucking rationale you have for some guy getting lifetime royalties for writing an episode of Full House." - Mike Wong

"The present air situation in the Pacific is entirely the result of fighting a fifth rate air power." - U.S. Navy Memo - 24 July 1944

So about a week from now, we'll hit 5 deaths per million. That's 1600 deaths a DAY

"If scientists and inventors who develop disease cures and useful technologies don't get lifetime royalties, I'd like to know what fucking rationale you have for some guy getting lifetime royalties for writing an episode of Full House." - Mike Wong

"The present air situation in the Pacific is entirely the result of fighting a fifth rate air power." - U.S. Navy Memo - 24 July 1944

Unfortunately I suspect we'll see a spike in suicides among nurses and doctors once this is over.

My experience is with SARS. That outbreak was a harrowing experience for the medical community but did not appear to lead to any significant long-term demoralization. OTOH, that outbreak was nowhere near as large as COVID-19 (800 dead, 8000 infected), which is maybe going to get to two to three (four?) orders of magnitude greater in scale by the time this is over.

Let's see... my place: SARS took 0.5 dead per 100k population, about 5x as many infected; and including 2 docs dead per million population. Yeah, COVID-19 is already worse than SARS ever was.

Oh, and East Asia, where COVID-19 was under reasonable control (with the economy shut down), is now experiencing a climbing number of case imports and secondaries from Europe and the USA. The narrative is that Westerners (and the heavily Westernized) just aren't staying away from bars and just aren't using facemasks, even when available, but the anecdotal evidence for it is pretty darned strong (but you know, confirmation bias).

That apparently is almost as many cases as Hong Kong, and HK is a densely packed city of 7 million while MoCo is a suburban county of only 1 million.

I'm suspending all non-essential travel.

"If scientists and inventors who develop disease cures and useful technologies don't get lifetime royalties, I'd like to know what fucking rationale you have for some guy getting lifetime royalties for writing an episode of Full House." - Mike Wong

"The present air situation in the Pacific is entirely the result of fighting a fifth rate air power." - U.S. Navy Memo - 24 July 1944

BREAKING: China will ban the entry of foreigners due to the international spread of coronavirus, foreign ministry says

You and your filthy germs can stay out of best china.

(OOC: before this shutdown apparently imported cases were holding steady at 50-100 a day.)

"If scientists and inventors who develop disease cures and useful technologies don't get lifetime royalties, I'd like to know what fucking rationale you have for some guy getting lifetime royalties for writing an episode of Full House." - Mike Wong

"The present air situation in the Pacific is entirely the result of fighting a fifth rate air power." - U.S. Navy Memo - 24 July 1944

The Canadian government says it's "strongly opposed" to the idea of sending American troops to the border to intercept illegal migrants as part of that country's response to the coronavirus pandemic.

"Canada is strongly opposed to this U.S. proposal and we've made that opposition very, very clear to our American counterparts," said Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland today.

"At the end of the day, every country takes it own decisions but ours is an important and valued partnership and we are making clear Canada's position."

As first reported by Global News, White House officials are actively discussing putting soldiers near the Canadian border because of border security concerns related to COVID-19 — raising diplomatic tensions on both sides of the border.

A source with knowledge of those discussions told CBC News the White House is looking at placing 1,000 troops about 25 kilometres from the border and using remote sensors to look out for irregular border-crossers.

The source stressed that the U.S. hasn't made a final decision.

When asked about the story during a morning news conference, Trudeau said the Canadian government has "been in discussions" with the United States on the issue.

"Canada and the U.S. have the longest unmilitarized border in the world. It is very much in both of our of interests for it to remain that way," Trudeau told reporters.

"It's benefited our two countries, our two economies, tremendously. We feel that it needs to remain that way."

The two countries have a mutual ban in place on non-essential travel across the border, which includes trips for recreational purposes.

When that ban was announced, both sides stressed the importance of continuing to allow trade, commerce and cross-border essential workers to move back and forth over the border.

"I know its easy to be defeatist here because nothing has seemingly reigned Trump in so far. But I will say this: every asshole succeeds until finally, they don't. Again, 18 months before he resigned, Nixon had a sky-high approval rating of 67%. Harvey Weinstein was winning Oscars until one day, he definitely wasn't."-John Oliver

"The greatest enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan."-General Von Clauswitz, describing my opinion of Bernie or Busters and third partiers in a nutshell.

“We’re playing Russian roulette with every garbage bag that we’re grabbing,” employee Sheldon White said. “Half the people don’t tie their bags, so when the stuff spills out, they tell you to pick it up. There’s Kleenexes that people blow their nose and cough in.”

“We’re playing Russian roulette with every garbage bag that we’re grabbing,” employee Sheldon White said. “Half the people don’t tie their bags, so when the stuff spills out, they tell you to pick it up. There’s Kleenexes that people blow their nose and cough in.”

>> Coronavirus symptoms: What you need to know

Workers said they want protective equipment and hazard pay.

The workers were sent home with pay Wednesday morning and were told to come back Thursday, when normal service is expected to resume.

>> Coronavirus: Know the facts directly from the CDC

Pittsburgh city officials released a statement, saying, they were taking “all due precautions" to protect sanitation workers.

“The City has been following Centers for Disease Control (and Prevention) guidance including having Environmental Services buildings and trucks cleaned regularly; providing workers with protective glasses and gloves; and doing daily health screenings," the statement said. "Workers are given gloves each day that they are not allowed to take home, and have been offered plastic gloves to wear under them if they wish.

“The City has provided Environmental Services workers wipes to regularly clean off their equipment, and the City has encouraged workers to wash their uniforms daily."

>> Coronavirus: Can the government make you stay home if you are sick?

Officials said the wife of an employee had a presumptive positive test result, which was reported Tuesday. As a result, the Environmental Services headquarters was cleaned and sanitized, the report was registered, and medical professionals were contacted to ensure CDC protocols were followed.

The worker is in self-quarantine, officials said, though he and his wife are not showing symptoms.

How DARE you ask for protective equipment and hazard pay, peons? Don't you know its your duty to die for capitalism?

"I know its easy to be defeatist here because nothing has seemingly reigned Trump in so far. But I will say this: every asshole succeeds until finally, they don't. Again, 18 months before he resigned, Nixon had a sky-high approval rating of 67%. Harvey Weinstein was winning Oscars until one day, he definitely wasn't."-John Oliver

"The greatest enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan."-General Von Clauswitz, describing my opinion of Bernie or Busters and third partiers in a nutshell.

US unemployment claims were expected to hit a record 1.5 million this week. Instead, they blew way past that to 3.28 million, nearly five times the previous record of 695,000, or the Great Recession's peak of 665,000 in March of 2009.

Americans displaced by the coronavirus crisis filed unemployment claims in record numbers last week, with the Labor Department reporting Thursday a surge to 3.28 million.

The number shatters the Great Recession peak of 665,000 in March 2009 and the all-time mark of 695,000 in October 1982. The previous week, which reflected the period before the worst of the coronavirus hit, was 282,000, which was higher than expected at the time.

Consensus estimates from economists surveyed by Dow Jones showed an expectation for 1.5 million new claims, though individual forecasts on Wall Street had been anticipating a much higher number. The surge comes amid a crippling slowdown brought on by the coronavirus crisis.

CH weekly ui claims march 21
The four-week moving average, which smooths out weekly distortions, was 1,731,000, an increase of 27,500 from the previous week’s revised average.

Despite the news being even worse than expected, the maj

or stock indexes opened more than 2% higher, wiping ut what had been sharp earlier losses.

“This was way bigger than we thought and the market’s still moving higher,” said Randy Frederick, vice president of trading and derivatives at Charles Schwab. “That’s a very encouraging sign that we may be in a bottoming process.”

An economic shutdown
Businesses across the country have shut down amid a policy of social distancing aimed at keeping COVID-19′s growth in check. Individual states have reported websites crashing amid a rush to file.

“We’ve known this number was coming for a week and a half,” said Tom Gimbel, founder and CEO of the LaSalle Network, a Chicago-based employment agency. “It doesn’t surprise me at all. When you see a city like Las Vegas get shut down, I don’t know what other options there were than seeing a number like this.”

Jobless claims are considered the quickest window into current economic conditions. Most data reports in recent weeks reflect periods before the worst of the coronavirus hit and have been showing the U.S. in relatively good shape heading into the crisis.

“This is a unique situation. People need to understand, this is not a typical downturn,” Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said earlier Thursday on NBC’s “TODAY.”

“At a certain point, we will get the spread of the virus under control. At that time, confidence will return, businesses will open again, people will come back to work,” he added. “So you may well see a significant rise in unemployment, a significant decline in economic activity. But there can also be a good rebound on the other side of that.”

However, the near-term damage will be dramatic.

The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, not seasonally adjusted, totaled 2,898,450 for last week. That’s an increase of 2,647,034, or 1,052.9%, from the previous week.

At a state level, the numbers were stunning.

Pennsylvania increased twentyfold, from 15,439 to 378,908, according to non-seasonally adjusted numbers. New York saw its number more than quintuple, rising from 14,272 to 80,334, while California tripled to 186,809. Louisiana, where coronavirus infections have risen at a dangerous pace, went from 2,255 a week earlier to 72,620.

The jobless claims numbers were released a day after the Senate passed a $2 trillion plan to respond to the pandemic, the biggest emergency relief package in U.S. history.

Disclosure: NBC and CNBC are owned by Comcast’s NBCUniversal unit.

"I know its easy to be defeatist here because nothing has seemingly reigned Trump in so far. But I will say this: every asshole succeeds until finally, they don't. Again, 18 months before he resigned, Nixon had a sky-high approval rating of 67%. Harvey Weinstein was winning Oscars until one day, he definitely wasn't."-John Oliver

"The greatest enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan."-General Von Clauswitz, describing my opinion of Bernie or Busters and third partiers in a nutshell.

Looking at the numbers, the USA will take the lead in another statistic by eod or tomorrow, latest (already leading in active cases, but simple linear projection predicts you overtake China and Italy today)... at the current time, 1 in 7 infected worldwide is an US citizen, and things have only just begun in most States.

A minute's thought suggests that the very idea of this is stupid. A more detailed examination raises the possibility that it might be an answer to the question "how could the Germans win the war after the US gets involved?" - Captain Seafort, in a thread proposing a 1942 'D-Day' in Quiberon Bay

"I know its easy to be defeatist here because nothing has seemingly reigned Trump in so far. But I will say this: every asshole succeeds until finally, they don't. Again, 18 months before he resigned, Nixon had a sky-high approval rating of 67%. Harvey Weinstein was winning Oscars until one day, he definitely wasn't."-John Oliver

"The greatest enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan."-General Von Clauswitz, describing my opinion of Bernie or Busters and third partiers in a nutshell.

2 days ago, but Spain is locking down for some time yet, and thus on the way to get things under control, soon.

The US will most likely have two or three more weeks of logarythmic explosion of cases and deaths until the lockdown takes effect and starts flattenting the curve, and it seems you are already getting overwhelmed.

Going with current projections, the US will exceed the Chinese death toll within the next week, and hit Spanish&Italian numbers by the end of it. And that does pretty much only count the NY predictions - the other States have only just started to go bad.

A minute's thought suggests that the very idea of this is stupid. A more detailed examination raises the possibility that it might be an answer to the question "how could the Germans win the war after the US gets involved?" - Captain Seafort, in a thread proposing a 1942 'D-Day' in Quiberon Bay

I'm morbidly curious if US fatalities due to the shitty response will pass the total death toll of the Iraq War (including civilian deaths)- just for all the people who said "Trump isn't as bad as Bush because he hasn't killed as many people as Iraq yet".

"I know its easy to be defeatist here because nothing has seemingly reigned Trump in so far. But I will say this: every asshole succeeds until finally, they don't. Again, 18 months before he resigned, Nixon had a sky-high approval rating of 67%. Harvey Weinstein was winning Oscars until one day, he definitely wasn't."-John Oliver

"The greatest enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan."-General Von Clauswitz, describing my opinion of Bernie or Busters and third partiers in a nutshell.

I'm morbidly curious if US fatalities due to the shitty response will pass the total death toll of the Iraq War (including civilian deaths)- just for all the people who said "Trump isn't as bad as Bush because he hasn't killed as many people as Iraq yet".

Iraq had a bit over 4400 deaths. Current prejections, that will be surpassed by the end of next week.

A minute's thought suggests that the very idea of this is stupid. A more detailed examination raises the possibility that it might be an answer to the question "how could the Germans win the war after the US gets involved?" - Captain Seafort, in a thread proposing a 1942 'D-Day' in Quiberon Bay

I'm morbidly curious if US fatalities due to the shitty response will pass the total death toll of the Iraq War (including civilian deaths)- just for all the people who said "Trump isn't as bad as Bush because he hasn't killed as many people as Iraq yet".

Iraq had a bit over 4400 deaths. Current prejections, that will be surpassed by the end of next week.

"including civilian deaths". The total there is disputed, I believe, but Google gives the number as 460,000 direct or indirect deaths, with more than 60% directly attributable to violence.

It probably depends on how broadly you define deaths caused indirectly by the war. Some estimates run into the millions IIRC.

"I know its easy to be defeatist here because nothing has seemingly reigned Trump in so far. But I will say this: every asshole succeeds until finally, they don't. Again, 18 months before he resigned, Nixon had a sky-high approval rating of 67%. Harvey Weinstein was winning Oscars until one day, he definitely wasn't."-John Oliver

"The greatest enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan."-General Von Clauswitz, describing my opinion of Bernie or Busters and third partiers in a nutshell.

Thursday night could become National Theatre night, as the company announced plans to broadcast some of its most popular productions for free during the lockdown.

The new two-month National Theatre at Home programme will begin with One Man, Two Guvnors, the Richard Bean comedy starring James Corden.

The films will be shown at 7pm every Thursday to try to recreate, where possible, the communal viewing experience. They will then be available on demand for seven days.

Lisa Burger, the executive director and joint chief executive of the National Theatre, said writers, actors and directors had all waived their rights to the productions.

“Everyone has said yes. Please. Let’s get it out to people,” she said. “It has taken a bit of negotiation and management but the outpouring from the industry has been fantastic.”

The shows will be available to watch on YouTube. They kick off on 2 April with a play regarded as one of the most joyously laugh-out-loud shows of the last decade.

One Man, Two Guvnors, directed by Nicholas Hytner, is Bean’s 2011 adaptation of Carlo Goldoni’s 1746 comedy and a brilliant vehicle for Corden’s stage comedy skills. The Guardian’s Michael Billington, giving it five stars, wrote: “The result, a kind of Carry On Carlo, is one of the funniest productions in the National’s history.”

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That will be followed by Sally Cookson’s adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, a production that began at Bristol Old Vic; Bryony Lavery’s adaptation of Treasure Island which was the National’s Christmas show in 2014, and the 2017 Twelfth Night, which starred Tamsin Greig as Malvolio. More titles are still to be announced.

The shows will also have accompanying contact, which includes Q&As with casts and creatives and post-show talks.

The National is just one of many arts organisations quickly endeavouring to get content out to the public during the coronavirus lockdown.

The RSC has teamed up with the BBC for six plays to be broadcast from their archives including the 2016 Hamlet starring Paapa Essiedu; the 2018 Macbeth that starred Christopher Eccleston and Niamh Cusack, and the 2015 Othello, which starred Hugh Quarshie and Lucian Msamati.

The Royal Opera House has made available productions that include the Royal Opera’s Così fan tutte and the Royal Ballet’s Peter and the Wolf.

Burger said storytelling was needed more than ever. “That combination of entertaining, inspiring, challenging … it makes us think a bit about what other people might be going through. But also it just brings people together around something which is shared. I hope it stimulates a lot of conversations.”

As well as National Theatre at Home, the theatre is making its online resource for schools, universities and libraries, the National Theatre Collection, accessible at home while everything is closed.

The National Theatre will be one of many arts organisations and individuals to benefit from Arts Council England’s £160m emergency package to help them survive the coronavirus crisis. The money is also designed to help them come up with creative responses “to buoy the public” during the lockdown

Burger said it was a positive move. “Of course it is very much needed because we are all in a very precarious position. It is good that they have got that money and we look forward to understanding how it will be used, how freelancers can be supported and also theatres who don’t receive Arts Council funding.”

New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, has said officials are seeing very early signs that physical distancing may be starting to slow the spread of coronavirus in his state, but cautioned that the number of cases is still rising significantly and hospitals would soon be overwhelmed.

The New York City metro area accounts for 60% of new Covid-19 cases in the US. Despite that, Cuomo said it was encouraging that hospitalizations were projected to double every 4.7 days on Tuesday, compared with Monday, when the number was doubling every 3.4 days, and Sunday, when the figure was every two days.

“The arrows are headed in the right direction, and that is always better than the arrows headed in the wrong direction,” Cuomo said at a press conference Wednesday.

But the virus still continues to spread quickly, and Cuomo said the “single greatest challenge” New York faces right now is a severe lack of ventilators, essential equipment for patients with potentially fatal Covid-19 infections. He said New York needs 30,000 ventilators but only has 4,000 in the current system.

Cuomo said the state has purchased 7,000, and the federal government has now provided 4,000 as high-tier officials start to recognize New York’s crisis. Cuomo has said doctors would start trialling the use of one ventilator for two patients.

New York City on Wednesday took further steps to decrease the density of people, announcing that some roads would be shut to cars to allow pedestrians to use them, and encouraging social and physical distancing to be observed in playgrounds. Sports that involve “close contact” such as basketball should also be avoided.

Cuomo warned that if these measures to reduce the density did not work on a voluntary basis, then the city would make the guidelines mandatory.

The moves came after Dr Deborah Birx, part of the White House coronavirus taskforce, said on Tuesday that about 56% of all the cases in the US, and 60% of new cases, are in the New York metro area. Mike Pence called on people who have recently left New York for other parts of the country to self-quarantine for 14 days.

The vice-president said: “We have to deal with the New York City metropolitan area as a high-risk area.”

Donald Trump tweeted on Wednesday that he had a good conversation with Cuomo, who later thanked Trump and his team for their cooperation. The tone was a considerable change from Tuesday, when Cuomo had fiercely criticized the federal government’s response to the pandemic and balked at Trump’s suggestion that restarting the economy superseded public health concerns.

While Trump has said he would like to see parts of the US economy reopening for business by April, and see churches packed by Easter Sunday, on 12 April, New York officials have implemented extreme social distancing measures, having non-essential employees work from home, shuttering schools and only allowing restaurants to provide takeout and delivery.

Still, more than one in every thousand New York residents has tested positive for the virus. The state confirmed 30,811 cases and 285 deaths as of Wednesday morning; 12% of cases have required hospitalization.

New York’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, said: “The world we knew is gone. And it’s not coming back, not for the next few months. That’s the blunt truth. We’re gonna lose some people.”

New York state accounts for roughly 7% of all confirmed coronavirus cases worldwide, and De Blasio said it was likely more than half of all New Yorkers will get Covid-19. New York City alone tallied 17,856 cases and 199 deaths. The large number of cases could be attributed to New York’s large testing numbers – it is testing more people per capita than South Korea.

New York officials are scrambling to equip hospitals with basic necessities to combat the virus. The hospital system has been given a mandate to increase capacity by at least 50%, but even if all hospitals doubled their capacity, the state would still be 34,000 beds short to accommodate projected numbers once the outbreak reaches its peak in the coming weeks.

There is also a severe shortage of space in intensive care units, where the most critical patients access ventilators. Right now, New York can support 3,000 ICU beds, but Cuomo said the hospitals will need 40,000 ICU beds – a more than 1,200% increase.

The Jacob Javits Center – a landmark convention center in midtown Manhattan – is being repurposed as a temporary hospital for Covid-19, along with four other sites selected by the army corps of engineers. But those new facilities will only inject a few thousand hospital beds into the wider network.

“The inescapable conclusion is that the rate of infection is going up,” Cuomo said at a press conference a day earlier, on Tuesday. “It is spiking. The apex is higher than we thought, and the apex is sooner than we thought. That is a bad combination of facts.”

Scott Weisenberg, an infectious diseases expert at NYU Langone, said hospitals are trying to create additional capacity with more beds and increased staffing. But he cautioned that a return to normalcy in a few weeks’ time would be completely inappropriate, at least in New York.

“I would just say I would be very cautious about trying to reopen society too soon,” he said. “Or you’ll end up paying for it with a lot more cases and more deaths that could have been prevented.”

"I know its easy to be defeatist here because nothing has seemingly reigned Trump in so far. But I will say this: every asshole succeeds until finally, they don't. Again, 18 months before he resigned, Nixon had a sky-high approval rating of 67%. Harvey Weinstein was winning Oscars until one day, he definitely wasn't."-John Oliver

"The greatest enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan."-General Von Clauswitz, describing my opinion of Bernie or Busters and third partiers in a nutshell.

On the off chance it was previously unclear or existed in a gray area for some people, the coronavirus crisis has confirmed, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Donald Trump is a complete and total sociopath. Last week, in response to a softball question about what he would say to the millions of Americans who are scared of the deadly virus sweeping the nation, Trump told a reporter, “I say that you’re a terrible reporter.” On Sunday, after taking the pandemic semi-seriously for about a week, he started pushing to “open” the country by Easter, arguing that the economy is more important that actual lives. And during a virtual town hall with Fox News on Tuesday, he appeared to suggest he’s willing to let thousands of New Yorkers die because Governor Andrew Cuomo hasn’t sufficiently sucked up to him.

Seemingly referring to Cuomo’s plea this week for the federal government to send more ventilators to the epicenter of the crisis, where 192 people have died—“Four hundred ventilators? I need 30,000 ventilators,” Cuomo said—Trump told Fox: “It’s a two-way street, they have to treat us well also. They can’t say, Oh gee we should get this, we should get that. We’re doing a great job. Like in New York where we’re building as I said, four hospitals…we’re literally building hospitals and medical centers, and then I hear there’s a problem with ventilators, well we sent them ventilators and they could have had 15 or 16,000, all they had to do was order them two years ago but they decided not to do it, they can’t blame us for that.”

According to the Daily Beast, Trump’s reference to New York supposedly passing up an opportunity to get ventilators two years ago came from a column by Betsy McCaughey, a die-hard supporter of the president, whose characterization of the situation was entirely off base:

A source on Gov. Cuomo’s team told the Daily Beast they believed McCaughey was referencing a 2015 New York government health report on ventilator guidelines for her column. The report’s data on ventilator need was based on numbers gathered for the 1918 influenza pandemic. The report’s guidelines went on to say that it was “not possible to accurately calculate the impact of a severe pandemic, including ventilator need” and that it is “likely that the approach used overestimates the number of ventilators that would be needed during a severe pandemic.”

President Trump “obviously didn’t read the document he’s citing—this was a five-year-old advisory task-force report, which never recommended the state procure ventilators—it merely referenced that New York wouldn’t be equipped with enough ventilators for a 1918 flu pandemic,” said Dani Lever, director of communications for Cuomo. “No one is, including Mr. Trump.”

As for the notion that Trump is only willing to go to bat for people who flatter him, a White House official basically confirmed that’s exactly what’s happening. “If you’re good and respectful to [Trump], he will treat you the same—it’s that simple,” the official told the Daily Beast. “The president has always said that he fights back when he needs to, and the situation with [Cuomo] is no different. If you keep that in mind, their sort of seesaw relationship during [coronavirus] doesn’t come as a surprise.” For his part, Cuomo has praised the White House, graciously thanking it for helping facilitate the construction of makeshift hospitals and sending the Army Corps of Engineers to help, and thanking the president at various press conferences. But apparently also noting that the situation is dire, and begging the president to invoke the Defense Production Act so people can breathe, is an act of treason not tolerated by the current regime.

While Cuomo has bore the brunt of Trump’s attacks on various Democratic governors, he’s far from the only one the president has gone after. Earlier this month, Trump called Washington governor Jay Inslee a “snake” and publicly admitted to telling Vice President Mike Pence “not to be complimentary” of him. And in other sociopathic moves, here’s what the president of the United States had to say about the news that a member of Congress had tested negative for COVID-19:

As far as I'm concerned, if Trump withholds coronavirus aid from New York for political reasons, then the State of New York has a casus belli against the Federal Government.

"I know its easy to be defeatist here because nothing has seemingly reigned Trump in so far. But I will say this: every asshole succeeds until finally, they don't. Again, 18 months before he resigned, Nixon had a sky-high approval rating of 67%. Harvey Weinstein was winning Oscars until one day, he definitely wasn't."-John Oliver

"The greatest enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan."-General Von Clauswitz, describing my opinion of Bernie or Busters and third partiers in a nutshell.

Governor of RI announced she has just ordered state police to stop any vehicles traveling in her state with NY plates. Also orders all visitors from NY to quarantine upon entry.

Edit: Texas Governor just announced mandatory quarantine for anyone flying in from NY, NJ, Conn or New Orleans..

Last edited by MKSheppard on 2020-03-26 04:09pm, edited 1 time in total.

"If scientists and inventors who develop disease cures and useful technologies don't get lifetime royalties, I'd like to know what fucking rationale you have for some guy getting lifetime royalties for writing an episode of Full House." - Mike Wong

"The present air situation in the Pacific is entirely the result of fighting a fifth rate air power." - U.S. Navy Memo - 24 July 1944

Is it constitutional to prohibit travel between states? It may be necessary, under the circumstances, but I'm curious as to the legal implications, and whether this sets a precedent some (read: Trump) could use to permanently undermine the right to freedom of movement within the United States.

"I know its easy to be defeatist here because nothing has seemingly reigned Trump in so far. But I will say this: every asshole succeeds until finally, they don't. Again, 18 months before he resigned, Nixon had a sky-high approval rating of 67%. Harvey Weinstein was winning Oscars until one day, he definitely wasn't."-John Oliver

"The greatest enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan."-General Von Clauswitz, describing my opinion of Bernie or Busters and third partiers in a nutshell.